Social Science Computer Review (SSCR) has an open call for papers for a special issue on “Gender and Digital Media” that will be published online August 2019. Deadline for manuscript submission is January 15, 2019.

Time’s Person the Year (2017) was the Silence Breakers. The award recognizes efforts across the globe to raise gender issues including those related to sexual violence. This movement aligns with other movements challenging the ways in which women’s voices are silenced or dismissed, as represented by the rise in discussions about mansplaining. This special issue will highlight the role of digital media in these movements as well as more generally the relationship between gender and digital media.

Sometimes digital media enables, other times it limits or impedes. For example, #metoo raises awareness of sexual violence, but using the hashtag makes people vulnerable to further victimization from trolls. Pointing out incidents of mansplaining can help raise awareness of this issue, but is social media able to support reasoned discussion that can inform social change? Is the online sphere able to support a complex discussion about (gender, race, class, sexuality-based) inequality in our society and do those discourses yield practical solutions to this problem?

Social media affordances can enable large scale mobilization, which may help the women’s movement as well as counter-movements, such as the men’s rights movement. While digital media can help produce large, diffuse networks, does it produce the strong ties required to sustain a movement? Tweeting at a protest event helps cultivate one’s civic identity, but it also enables government and police surveillance of these events. How are feminist organizations and groups responding to the challenges and opportunities presented by digital media?

We encourage a broad range of papers covering digital media’s advantages and disadvantages along two main research dimensions:

  • Gendered political uses of digital media, such as
    • Women’s use of digital media for civic or political purposes
    • Gendered discourses in political and social environments
    • Changing repertoires for online activism
    • Gender dynamics of trolling (perpetrators, targets)
    • Gender and digital inequality (skills, capital-enhancing uses) across the globe
  • Gendered organizations and social movements, such as
    • Studies of #metoo and similar movements across the globe
    • Role of social media in protest events, such as the Women’s March
    • Adoption or rejection of the digital tools by movements seeking gender equality
    • The challenges of creating and cultivating an online collective identity that balances similarity and diversity
    • Interactions between gender-oriented movements and their counter-movements and states

We invite submissions from research conducted across the globe. We encourage qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. Cross-national and longitudinal studies are especially welcome. As per Social Science Computer Review guidelines, all manuscripts must be empirical (must include data).

Manuscripts should be a maximum of 8,000 words (all included).

All manuscript will go through a double-blind peer review process.

Important dates:

Deadline for the manuscripts January 15, 2019
Desk rejection January 30, 2019
Accepted manuscripts published as online first ~ August 2019

The manuscript and all additional documents should be send to:sscr.gender@gmail.com

Further details:

CfP_SSCR special issue_Gender and digital media July30